LIFE AgriAdapt attending 4th ECCA 2019 in Lisbon

Organised for the first time in southern Europe, the 4th European Climate Change Adaptation (ECCA) builds upon past editions (Hamburg 2013, Copenhagen 2015 and Glasgow 2017, bringing researchers, policymakers and practitioners from Europe and beyond to discuss recent advances on climate change adaptation, find solutions, and inspire collective action to increase Europe’s resilience. Convened by EU-funded projects on behalf of the European Commission, this biennial conference is an opportunity to share and learn from professionals in adaptation while discovering new products and research as well as alternative approaches to engaging with stakeholders. It also provides insights on data, methods and approaches in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, co-production of knowledge, solutions and services, communication, data-sharing and decision support, and much more.

During 3 days, 96 different parallel sessions have been organised to present the current state-of-the-art knowledge and inspired actions implemented. Thus, LIFE AgriAdapt upcoming webtool for adaptation has been presented in a dedicated session entitled “Climate services and methods for agriculture and food production”. The AgiAdapt experimentation on more than 120 pilot farms belonging to 4 different countries in Europe revealed the strong need for specific and local agro climatic indicators to help farming stakeholders better understand farm vulnerability issues. This first step seems essential to then engage them into an adaptation process of their farming practices. As numerous sources of climate projections become available in Europe, there is a need to multiply their valorization in particular by setting them into relevant crop or animal indicators. The LIFE AgriAdapt web-tool aims to fill the missing link between climate services or providers and farming sector end-users to facilitate the implementation of adaptation processes.